I'm not interested in slick P.R. handouts.  I'm interested in scientific
studies.  Because you see it in black and white. does that make it so.
Did you ever question any information that you were taught while in
school?  Or do you simply espouse what you've been told to say?

You would call me an anti-fluoridationist.  The only people I've heard
call fluoridation a communist plot is the dental community.  No one I've
worked with has ever said fluoridation was a communist plot.  So if your
black and white handout says anti-fluoridationists claim fluoridation is a
communist plot, you now  know it's not true.  

Actually my challenge wasn't focused on the "communist plot" statement
because I'm used to being called names by the dental community.
My challenge was meant against the claim  that tooth decay skyrocketed
after fluoridation was stopped.

After talking to hundreds of people about fluoride, I've found that most
people don't know if fluoride is in their water.   If they do know, many
of them think it's there to purify the water.  Most people don't know that
 too much fluoride will discolor their children's teeth.  I blame the
dental community for not educating consumers about the negatives of
fluoride.  It appears to be in dentistry's political benefit to keep
information from the public so that they can't speak out against
fluoridation.

It's very hard to get our side into the papers because reporters will go
to the dental community as experts.  Unfortunately, the dental community
has never done any studies to prove fluoridation is safe.  If you say they
have, I'd appreciate your providing me with the name of the journal
article and where it was published.

You are speaking of the dose of fluoride....

Look in history and you see a decline in caries, when fluoridated
toothpastes enter the market....
I think you would agree.

Other studies (Swiss and Norway) show a decline in caries, when
drinking water was fluoridated. On the other hand you find a lot of
cohort studies regarding locations, where the drinking water is
naturally fluoridated. (Sorry, medline access is too expensive for me,
so I am citating Pro. Ott and collegues at uni muenster).

Do you know a switch in molecular biology, that small doses of
fluoride cause cancer or other live-threatening diseases?

The incubation time of these diseases are very long. I believe, the
only access you have to evaluate teh problem today is epidemiology.
the results are still far in the future, cause either the patients are
too young or the diseases, that now occured are confounded by other
factors like bad nutrition in the time of war (esp. in Europe), toxic
habits like smoking, etc..

In my little opinion, there is no problem, cause the positive effects
of low dose fluoride medication is proofed by history. Side- or toxic
effects only by overdoses, animal evaluation, nothing more.
(So far I know...)

If anybody has an idea for a scientific approach to this problem, I
would be happy to hear about it.

Best regards

Ernst

Ernst Schmidtmann
Zur Post 21
33161 H?velhof
Germany
voice: +49 5257 930372
fax: +49 5257 940104

Dreaming of working in the States

When properly done studies are conducted comparing fluoride users against
fluoride non-users, with all background variables being similar, there is
virtually no difference in tooth decay rates.

On the other hand you find a lot of

Regards back to you

Carol Kopf

Now, now, Carol.

From 'Water Fluoridation in New Zealand' -Public Health Commission.

In 1977 an analysis of cancer mortality statistics showed
significantly increased mortality rates in 10 fluoridated cities
compared to 10 non-fluoridated cities. This was reported by the
biochemists Yiamouyiannis and Burk (as described by Smith (1980)).
The data they have used have been analysed by the National Cancer
Institute and others (including a New Zealand epidemiologist: Alan
Smith (1980) and Doll and Kinlen, (1977)). Given the appropriate
levels of adjustment for age, ethnicity and gender differences
(which had not been adequately undertaken by Yiamouyiannis and
Burk) these results showed no association between fluoridation and
cancer mortality. One group that had analysed the Yiamouyiannis
and Burk data noted that "the paper presenting the findings
provides clear examples of the most commonly committed errors in
the analysis of mortality data on human populations" (Strassburg
and Greenland, 1979). The association of fluoride and cancer
suggested by Yiamouyiannis and Burk also lacked biological
plausibility in that no latency period was evident (Smith, 1980).
That is, the cancer rate was described as increasing as soon as
fluoridation was introduced and yet cancer latency periods are
nearly always over five years with a median at around 15 years for
some common cancers. (Chilvers, 1982).

In subsequent years Yiamouyiannis and Burk continued to reiterate
their initail claim. This was despite continued criticism of their
initial study (eg, Doll, 1977) and a subsequent reanalysis of
United States data with with narrower age-bands and a claimed more
appropriate set of control cities which contradicted their
findings. (Kinlen and Doll, 1981).

Many other epidemiological studies have been conducted and have not
shown any relationship between cancer and exposure to fluoridated
water."

That is continued and goes on to describe animal studies as well,
where much higher fluoride levels were used, though. None of the
osteomas showed pre-cancerous changes.

The National Cancer Institute left out over 80% of the data by looking at
only selected years as opposed to considering all of the years before the
inception of fluoridation and after its inception as did Yiamouyiannis and
Burk.  Burk and Yiamouyiannis **did** adjust for age, ethnicity, and
gender differences as early as 1976 (Hearings Before the 94th Congress)
and still found an increase in cancer death rates.  Also, one of the few
years used by the NCI and a number of other researchers was 1970.  Yet
some of the control cities had instituted fluoridation by that time.  In
other words, the NCI (and all of the other researchers you cited) ignored
data between 1960 and 1968 when all of the the control cities had not
fluoridated and then chose 1970 when some of them had already started
fluoridation.

In fact, two of the authors you cite above testified that even when
leaving out over 80% of the data, and adjusting for age, gender, and
ethnicity, there was an increase in cancer.  Here is Dr. Kinlin's
testimony in 1978 (at the US Hearing on cancer and fluoridation):

Q.  "Doctor, did you go over those calculations as I had gone through them?
A.  "Yes."
Q.  "Do they appear to be correct, sir"?
A.  "Yes."
Q.  "In other words, the figure for the fluoridated column appears to be
     1.03, does it not?"
A.  "Yes."
Q.  "And the figure for the nonfluoridated area appears to be 0.98 does
     it not?"
A.  "Yes."
Q.  "And does that not indicated that the fluoridated group appeared to
     have approximately a five percent greater cancer incidence rate than
     the nonfluoridated group?"
A.  "The lef [the cancer incidence figure in the fluoridated column] was
     5% larger than the right [the cancer incidence figure from the
     nonfluoridated column]".

Here is an excerpt of Dr. Doll's testimony in 1982 before the Scottish
High Court in Edinburgh (p. 19259-19261):

Q.  "Well, the figures speak for themselves, don't they, and would you
     agree that in general terms they show, whichever method you use, that
     the fluoridated cities do worse than the nonfluoridated cities in
     comparison as to what happened between 1950 and 1970?"
A.  "Yes, I do agree, and that is why I said this paper was the first
     paper which I thought was of any consequence..."

Age Group        Increase
  0-24            +0.4   cancer deaths per 100,000 population
 25-44            +0.2
 45-64            +8
 65+              +35

"The fact that fluoride affects older people is quite understandable.  As
people grow older, there is a decline in the DNA repair system and the
immune system, the body's two major defense mechanisms against cancer.  
Thus, as people reach the age of 45 or more, the additional damage done
by fluoride to an immune system and a DNA repair [system] already
weakended by age results in an increase in cancer death rates."

This is a very plausible argument and does not have anything to do with
the latency period.  However, the longer fluoridation is in effect, one
might expect the cancer death rates and incidence rates to go up further
because of additional damage to the immune system and DNA repair system.  
(Note:  the cancer death rate will be reduced by other techniques such as
surgery.)

Yiamouyiannis lists nine other studies in his book, "Fluoride: The Aging
Factor," which showed an increase in cancer incidence or death rates.  He
also discusses many of the major and obvious flaws in these
epidemiological studies.

It is true that higher levels of fluoride were used in animal studies, but
we do not have a figure to convert between the lifetime dosage required to
cause increased cancer deaths in rodents and that in humans.  The
important fact is that there is a clear increase in cancer death rates in
fluoridated cities after its inception (~10,000 deaths per year).

Best Wishes,
                             - Mark

             http://www.tiac.net/users/mgold/health.html
    (Web articles on cooking.net">food & Nutrition, Yoga, aspartame/NutraPoison,
     sweetener resources, stevia, toxic carpeting, rBGH, fluoride
     detoxification, mental health resources.  Much more to come.
         Lots of links to medical and holistic healing sites.
          Will email articles if you do not have WWW access.

: The problem, Ernst,  is that most of those studies that show tooth decay
: decline are poorly done, i.e. no proper control group, no history of other
: fluoride use, no dental hygiene or diet history,  no examination for
: adverse effects, etc.  Most of the  time dental researchers look for just
: how good fluoride can be and just how much more we can use.  Researchers
: can always find what they look for.  

This is false.  The body of clinical data on this issue is simply
enormous, and by claiming that it on the whole is "poorly done", I
think you are just demonstrating your own limited knowledge of the
literature.

I've put together a web page with results of MEDLINE searches of the
recent clinical literature on fluoridation and some particularly "hot"
issues, such as the putative links with cancer, hip fracture rates,
etc.  I did not filter the searches: you can read all the available
abstracts and draw your own conclusions.

        <http://hyper.stanford.edu/~dhinds/fluoride>

: When properly done studies are conducted comparing fluoride users against
: fluoride non-users, with all background variables being similar, there is
: virtually no difference in tooth decay rates.

That is false.  See, for example, the studies of tooth decay in
Anglesey (http://hyper.stanford.edu/~dhinds/anglesey).  These studies
tracked tooth decay in a single community over time... before its
water was fluoridated, during fluoridation, and after fluoride was
withdrawn.  Can you find an obvious flaw in these experiments?

: Areas of the southwest U.S. have naturally high fluoride levels and low
: decay.  However, those areas also have high amounts of Calcium and
: Magnesium in their water.  The National Institutes of Dental Research said
: that, even though over half of the United States drinking water is
: artificially fluoridated, that area of the southwest still has a lower
: decay rate than the rest of the country.

Uhh, what conclusion are you trying to draw from this?  How do the
natural fluoride levels in the southwest compare with the levels in
artificially fluoridated areas?  Was this study "properly done" with
controls for all background variables?  If these areas also have high
levels of other minerals, it would seem not.

: We've already discussed in this group the studies of Burk and
: Yiamouyiannis that showed a higher rate of cancer  over a ten year period
: in fluoridated communites vs. non-fluoridated communities after
: adjustments for age, race, sex.  It's always attacked but never
: successfully on the scientific merits of the study.

I could not find a single study in the past five years that indicated
any positive correlation of fluoridation with increased cancer risk.
The earlier studies are generally considered to be methodologically
flawed.  See <http://hyper.stanford.edu/~dhinds/fluoride/cancer> for
recent abstracts.

: The first step would be to stop putting fluoride into everyone's water so
: that we could stop being human guinea pigs.

You are being a "human guinea pig" every time you go to the store to
buy something to stick in your mouth.  Fluoride is one of the most
extensively studied cooking.net">food additives.  If you're going to get so worked
up about something, I think you should try to find something with
fewer positive health benefits and less dubious claims of supposed
health risks (when used properly).

: The scientific approach would
: be to evaluate an individuals' decay levels, health and fluoride
: consumption from all sources and prescribe fluoride in the dentist's or
: physician's office.  Tell the patient what the side effects are so that
: the patient can weigh the benefits vs. the risks.

I agree with this completely.  Fluoridated water, however, seems to be
a very effective way of administering a reasonably well-regulated
amount of fluoride to everyone likely to benefit, with minimal side
effects.

        -- Dave Hinds

I'll just choose this bit until I've gone over your article in more detail.

You posted before:

1950              180.8           179.0             1.8
Year           Fluoridated    Nonfluoridated     Difference
Fluorida-      cities (F)*    cities (NF)+         F - NF
tion epoch
1953              190.2           185.9             4.3

Why such a big jump between 1950 and 1953?

As to minimal side effects, Mark Diesendorf put it nicely (How Science
Can Illuminate Ethical Debates A Case Study On Water Fluoridation,
FLUORIDE, 28:2, 87-104, 1995): "Is it right for medical, dental and
public health professionals to mislead people that fluoride is an
essential nutrient, when fluoridated drinking water has neglible systemic
benefit, but may at best have a small topical benefit? Is it right for
society to impose risks on some people for the possibility of conferring
minor benefits or convenience on the same or other people?"

Elke Babiuk
--
http://www.santarosa.edu/~dmontgom/fluoride.htm
http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/PDHA/health.htm

How much fluoride do our children ingest through cold mist humidifiers
shooting out fluoridated water?  How much fluoride is inhaled or absorbed
during a fluoridated shower or bath?    

Besides all that, fluoride is a component of acid rain.  Fluoride
contaminates foods cooked in teflon coated cookwear.  The Government
tracks hydrogen fluoride air emissions from industry.  Fluoride is a
component of ocean mist.  We won't even get into all the fluoridated
dental products that exist and the inappropriate ways they are used and
prescribed..

And you think fluoridated water is "well-regulated" way to deliver 1
milligram of fluoride to children?   I don't.

Carol Kopf

Thanks

M.

--

: : "The fact that fluoride affects older people is quite understandable.  As
: : people grow older, there is a decline in the DNA repair system and the
: : immune system, the body's two major defense mechanisms against cancer.  
: : Thus, as people reach the age of 45 or more, the additional damage done
: : by fluoride to an immune system and a DNA repair [system] already
: : weakended by age results in an increase in cancer death rates."

So, the argument is that older people are much more sensitive to
carcinogens due to a lifetime of accumulated damage, and that cancer
will have a shorter latency because most of the damage was done much
earlier in life.  I think it has also been suggested to play a role in
skin cancer (a severe sunburn early in life seems to make people more
sensitive for the rest of their lives).  It is a reasonable hypothesis
in any case.

: You posted before:

: 1950              180.8           179.0             1.8
: Year           Fluoridated    Nonfluoridated     Difference
: Fluorida-      cities (F)*    cities (NF)+         F - NF
: tion epoch
: 1953              190.2           185.9             4.3

: Why such a big jump between 1950 and 1953?

Well, cancer rates were rising steadily for many years before
fluoridation was introduced.  After that, the selected group of "NF"
cities broke the trend, which continued without a glitch in the "F"
cities.  Mark's explanation for this is that the "NF" cities benefited
from improvements in treatment that coincided with fluoridation, while
"F" cities continued the trend due to the impact of fluoride.

I think this is a worthless study from its very inception.  Total
cancer death rate may be interesting from a general public health
perspective, but it is not a useful statistic for determining causal
relationships.  In the past 50 years, the typical "mix" of cancers has
undergone dramatic changes, due to changes in demographics, diet,
diagnosis, and treatment efficacity.  Risk factors for many cancers
are still poorly understood.  Grouping all cancers together to extract
a correlation is statistically unsound.

Mark says that the authors of these studies have conducted a sound
statistical analysis of the data and have properly "corrected" for all
the confounding variables (age, ethnicity, etc).  From his own
comments about the literature, it is clear that the scientific
consensus is against him.  In a properly conducted epidemiological
study, the treatment groups are matched in advance to have as similar
demographics as possible: post-hoc corrections for inappropriate
control groups are always inferior to good experimental design.  Part
of the reason for designing experiments this way is that we do not
know what variables may turn out to be important in advance, so it
is generally impossible to completely adjust data to eliminate
biases.  By matching groups as well as possible in advance, the idea
is that variables we can't control (and don't even know about) are
less likely to distort the results if the test groups are at least as
similar as possible by the criteria we *can* control.  Even this is
obviously fallible.  Which is why good epidemiology is extremely
difficult, and any epidemiological result should be greeted with
skepticism.

The EPA does not classify fluoride as a carcinogen.  So I suppose
we'll have to group the EPA, NCI, NIH, and dentists together in the
"great fluoridation {*filter*}".

See <http://hyper.stanford.edu/fluoride> for abstracts of recent
clinical papers on the link between fluoride and cancer.

        -- Dave Hinds

: Talk about "worked up."  You followed me from another newsgroup and set up
: your own fluoride web site on fluoride in just a week or so.  You became
: an expert in such a short time.  That must be nice.  It took me at least
: two years of actually reading both sides of the fluoridation lilterature
: and the asking the oppostion to point out the scientific flaws.  
: How long did it take you?

Don't flatter yourself: I didn't "follow" you here: your compatriot
Mark Gold suggested that I check out his posts here for some
"revelations" about admissions by public health officials to Congress
about the risks of fluoride.

I have no axe to grind on this issue: I'm not a dentist, just a
biochemist working in genetic epidemiology, with a strong background
in statistics, and a strong dislike for pseudo-scientific bullshit and
misuse of statistics.  You say that you have spent two years reading
the literature?  And you are still convinced that the pro-fluoride
position has no scientific merit?  Then you are living in a fantasy
world.  Your inflamatory anti-fluoridation posts do nothing to further
the legitimate scientific debate on the subject, and only marginalize
your own position.  After seeing some of the other threads in
sci.med.dentistry, it sounds like you and Mark have become something
of a fixture here, and are generally ignored.  Now that I know better,
I'll probably do so as well.

I think I've approached the issue with an open mind, believe it or not
(for example, my web page does not contain any editorial commentary,
only simple literature searches).  Before performing my own "blind"
literature searches, I didn't know what the current literature on
fluoride toxicity, links with cancer, fractures, etc would show, and I
thought you might really have a "smoking gun" on one or more of these
subjects.  If anything, you and Mark can claim credit for creating
another pro-fluoridation advocate, by your scientifically naive posts.
I think you would do your cause more good by just being silent, or
sticking to areas where you are unlikely to run into a skeptic with a
bit of scientific training.  Maybe that was why you crept into
misc.consumers.frugal.

It took me about an hour to create the web site (the MEDLINE searches
took all of about 20 minutes, while I was working on something else;
reading them took a bit longer).

That's <http://hyper.stanford.edu/~dhinds/fluoride>, if anyone is
still listening.  I doubt that.

        -- Dave Hinds